F1: Bottas Wins Austrian GP Qualifying, 2nd Career Pole

Bottas has claimed his second pole in F1 at the Austrian GP 2017 qualifying. He will start alongside Vettel who claimed P2. Hamilton was third but given his 5 place grid penalty, the Brit will start from P8 tomorrow. Valsecchi asked Hamilton and Vettel to shake hands after the race but it didn’t happen.

Wehrlein was the first driver out in the 18 minute Q1 session. At the Austrian GP, Hamilton will serve a five place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change, the Mercedes driver has topped all sessions in Spielberg this weekend. After Wehrlein’s time, Ericsson came on top followed by Magnussen before Vettel emerged with a much quicker 1m06.437s lap.

Mercedes joined the field moments later, with Bottas on supersofts and Hamilton on ultrasofts. Hamilton immediately set a fastest time on 1m05.238s, with Bottas going fourth. Magnussen stopped on the track with a technical issue, he was later pulled out of the session by the team.

Vettel, Raikkonen and Bottas were the only drivers who used supersofts in Q1, the rest were on ultrasofts. Raikkonen was eleventh before making a final desperate run which paid off by placing him second after a 1m05.148s lap.

Austrian GP 2017

1 of 23

Eliminated in Q1 were Palmer, Massa, Stroll, Ericsson and Wehrlein. The top ten in this session were Hamilton, Raikkonen, Vettel, Sainz, Bottas, Verstappen, Ricciardo, Grosjean, Perez and Kvyat.

Hamilton and Bottas headed Q2 session which is 15 minutes long. This time round Hamilton was on supersofts, Vettel opted for the ultrasofts and was fastest immediately after his lap. The Ferrari and Mercedes drivers headed back to the pits after their first runs.

Top 10 will start the race tomorrow on the tyres they set their quickest lap on in Q2

On the final runs, Ferrari sent Vettel out again on a set of new ultrasofts, Hamilton followed him with a new set of supersofts. The Ferrari man went second on 1m04.772s just about when the chequered flag flew. Alonso did not improve and was eliminated, Vandoorne improved but not enough to stay out of the dropzone.

Verstappen led Q3 action and set a time of 1m05.110s, Ricciardo beat that with a 1m04.997s, moments later Hamilton went fastest with a 1m04.424s. Vettel’s lap was even quicker after a 1m04.293s on ultrasofts. After his run, Verstappen went back into the pits and was back out again for his second run.

All ten cars were back on the track with 90s left. Unfortunately the yellow flags came out just about the same time as the chequered flag. That prevented any driver from making any improvements. Grosjean had stopped on the track while Verstappen had a moment at turn 7 before running into the gravel trap on turn 8. That caused the yellow flags.